"Yet stand as you are
One moment," he murmur'd. "I think, could I gaze
Thus awhile on your face, the old innocent days
Would come back upon me, and this scorching heart
Free itself in hot tears. Do not, do not depart
Thus, Lucile! stay one moment. I know why you shrink,
Why you shudder; I read in your face what you think.
Do not speak to me of it. And yet, if you will,
Whatever you say, my own lips shall be still.
I lied. And the truth, now, could justify nought.
There are battles, it may be, in which to have fought
Is more shameful than, simply, to fail. Yet, Lucile,
Had you help'd me to bear what you forced me to feel--"
"Could I help you," she murmur'd, "but what can I say
That your life will respond to?" "My life?" he sigh'd. "Nay,
My life hath brought forth only evil, and there
The wild wind hath planted the wild weed: yet ere
You exclaim, 'Fling the weed to the flames,' think again
Why the field is so barren. With all other men
First love, though it perish from life, only goes
Like the primrose that falls to make way for the rose.
For a man, at least most men, may love on through life:
Love in fame; love in knowledge; in work: earth is rife
With labor, and therefor, with love, for a man.
If one love fails, another succeeds, and the plan
Of man's life includes love in all objects! But I?
All such loves from my life through its whole destiny
Fate excluded. The love that I gave you, alas!
Was the sole love that life gave to me. Let that pass!
It perish'd, and all perish'd with it. Ambition?
Wealth left nothing to add to my social condition.
Fame? But fame in itself presupposes some great
Field wherein to pursue and attain it. The State?
I, to cringe to an upstart? The Camp? I, to draw
From its sheath the old sword of the Dukes of Luvois
To defend usurpation? Books, then? Science, Art?
But, alas! I was fashion'd for action: my heart,
Wither'd thing though it be, I should hardly compress
'Twixt the leaves of a treatise on Statics: life's stress
Needs scope, not contraction! what rests? to wear out
At some dark northern court an existence, no doubt,
In wretched and paltry intrigues for a cause
As hopeless as is my own life! By the laws
Of a fate I can neither control nor dispute,